Product Description

A compilation of poetry by the much neglected, early twentieth-century avant-garde poet is accompanied by a concise profile of the enigmatic writer's turbulent life. Reprint.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #364648 in Books
• Published on: 1997-04-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780374525071
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Amazon.com Review
Roger L. Conover, the editor of this excellent posthumous collection, has done the poetry-reading world quite a favor. Many of these poems originally appeared in long-defunct and nearly forgotten avant-garde journals, and have never before been available in book form. Mina Loy was a favorite of the other modernists (Ezra Pound thought she was as important a writer as William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore), and the energy in her writing is truly impressive. Here's a taste, from "Mexican Desert": "The belching ghost-wail of the locomotive / trailing her rattling wooden tail / into the jazz-band sunset ... " Included here, too, are Loy's essays about poetry, futurism, and feminism.

From Publishers Weekly
Mina Loy's wry, confident inquiries into the nature of men, women and sexuality are a great undiscovered treasure of modernism. Though her work was published beside Eliot's and Pound's in the little magazines of the 1910s and 20s, we are perhaps only now, in the post-feminist '90s, fully equipped to handle it. Through both her work and her transcontinental, bon vivant lifestyle, Loy (1882-1966) defined the "modern" woman, a detached, unsentimental, brutally witty creature who called it as she saw it: "The skin sack/ in which a wanton duality/ packed/ all the completion of my infructious impulses/ something the shape of a man." Her cool ironies, heady carnality and innovative line placement blew away the remnants of Victorianism that clung to poetry, clearing the way for more up-front, if still unresolvable, relations between the sexes: "Let them clash together/ From their incognitoes/ In seismic orgasm." While the extensive textual notes included by Conover, an editor at MIT Press, may seem excessive (one wishes for more of the poetry), his selection also allows the cerebral Loy to emerge as a sophisticated critic-in-verse of contemporaries Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Stein and others. (July) FYI: FSG will concurrently publish the first full-scale biography of Loy, Becoming Modern (Forecasts, May 6). A fictionalized treatment of Loy's life can be found in Albert J. Guerard's novel The Hotel in the Jungle (Baskerville, Forecasts, Apr. 15).
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
A collected edition of Loy's (1882-1966) elusive and neglected work has long been overdue. Conover provides a useful scholarly text (with 60 pages of editorial notes) that brings the bohemian cult figure of the 1920s out of obscurity into the mainstream of 20th-century poetry. Born in England, Loy became famous in America as a celebrity associated with avant-garde movements like Futurism. She has been denied serious critical consideration, her work regarded as satire of conventional morality?an angry Edna St. Vincent Millay. With this comprehensive edition, one sees clearly that Loy's bold, original work?brief as it is?represents a gutsy, creative quest by an unusual woman to challenge biases that limit how a writer can define herself. Conover views her as a pioneer who paved the way for the likes of Lucille Clifton, Sharon Olds, Adrienne Rich, and Ann Waldman. Recommended for large libraries.?Frank Allen, North Hampton Community Coll., Tannersville, Pa
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

The most neglected talent of the century.
As an English major at a respected private college, I did not encounter this phenomenal woman's work. Five years later, I ask myself why. Stunning, intelligent, ground-breaking verse.

Mina Loy did not pursue literary fame (though she hobnobbed with the best), and it is, perhaps for this reason that I find her work so intriguing. Unhampered by criticism, Loy's work evokes a rare liberty. It is both poised and raw.

See also, BECOMING MODERN (her biography), for further adventures of this feminist, model, actress, painter, poet.

If you like T.S. Eliot...
Mina Loy is a treasure waiting to be discovered by the public. In the early 1900's she was part of the Bohemian Greenwich Village art scene, with the likes of Marcell Duchamp and William Carlos Williams. As an individual she was independent, sophisticated, mythical, intelligent, and enigmatic. Her poetry was refined, Surrealist, intellectual, psuedo-scientific, futuristic and abstract. A hundred years ago, when Loy arrived in America, everyone was asking: "Who is this strange woman?" Today, people are still asking this same question. Discover her for yourself.

a must for poets
I came across Loy in reading about the women of Paris. I have never come back to any book more than this one. Her craft of wordsmith continues to inspire and always make me feel like i'm reading the most interesting book of poetry.